64th Congress 
1st Session 


} 


SENATE 


/ Document 
X No. 543 


Speech of Notification 


By SENATOR OLLIE M. JAMES 

n 


AND 


Speech of Acceptance 

By PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 





PRESENTED BY MR. FLETCHER 
September 2, 1916.—Ordered to be printed 


WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1916 










SEP 


: 








T K £ 317 

19/6 
. J3 


X 










/ 


4 





* 



of D. 

J6 J9lg 




NOTIFICATION SPEECH OF HON. OLLIE M. JAMES. 


Mr. President : The Democracy of the Republic assembled in 
national convention at St. Louis, Mo., June 14, 1916, was genuinely 
representative of the true spirit of America—its ideals of justice 
and of patriotism. 

These representatives of the purest democracy in the world, after 
three and a half years of trial of your service to the people of the 
country, with a Nation to choose from to fill the greatest office in 
the world, instinctively and enthusiastically turned to you. By this 
they net onty registered their own will and desire, but also the will 
and wish of the people back home, whose trusted and honored 
spokesmen they were. With an enthusiasm, unanimity, and earnest¬ 
ness never surpassed in the political life of America, they have sum¬ 
moned you again to lead the hosts of peace, prosperity, and American 
righteousness. 

They do not make this call upon you for the purpose of hon¬ 
oring you, for you have already had bestowed upon you by your 
countrymen the greatest honor within their gift. They call you 
for service to America and mankind; a service you have so amply 
proved to be of the highest type known to just governments among 
men; a service that has given justice to all men uppn free and equal 
terms; a service that has restored taxation to its historic and consti¬ 
tutional function; a service that has freed trade to individual and 
honest endeaAmr; a seiwice that has lifted from the tables and homes 
of the plain people of America a burden of taxation which they have 
unjustly borne for more than a half century and placed it upon 
the wealth and fortunes of the land; a service that has driven mo¬ 
nopoly from its rendezvous of taxation; a service that has denied 
to the trusts of Republican creation a hiding place in our economic 
< life; a service to the toilers of America that lifted them from the 
despised level of a commodity to the high plane of a human unit 
in our industrial life; a service that has dignified them—the great 
army of workers of the field, factory, and mine; a service that 
opened the courts to all men upon equal terms of justice and con¬ 
stitutional liberty; a service that freed the money of a nation from 
the control of a “money oligarchy’ 5 and lodged it in the hands 
of the Government; a service that at once destroyed two trusts, a 
Money Trust and a Panic Trust, where the business can not be 

3 



4 NOTIFICATION SPEECH OF HON. OLLIE M. JAMES. 

oppressed or destroyed by manipulation of the money market, nor 
legislation controlled, intimidated, or suppressed by the Panic Trust. 
These two trusts that your service and matchless leadership de¬ 
stroyed live only in memory, as contemporary with the malodorous 
rule of the boss-ridden and monopoly-controlled stand-pat Repub¬ 
lican Party. 

It is a service which has prepared the Nation for its defense; a 
service to fair and equal treatment to all men by destroying a sub¬ 
sidy fed to an American monopoly; a service to the farmers of our 
country who yearn for a home and fireside to call their own by enact¬ 
ing into law a Federal rural credits system that makes credit and 
home building easy tb the tillers of the soil; a service that 
in the stormiest hours of America’s life and the bloodiest days 
of the life of the world, you have kept our people at peace with all 
the earth; a service that has kept homes happy, family ‘circles 
unbroken, while the Old World staggers beneath its weight of 
sorrow, mourning, and death; a service whose victories for the 
freedom of the seas, the rights of neutral life, the protection of 
American citizens and American rights stands resplendent in the 
world’s international law and in the earth’s diplomac}^. This great 
triumph which you achieved for America and the world gave pro¬ 
tection to noncombatants and neutrals that war-mad countries must 
respect, and this diplomatic achievement .will be the guiding, pro¬ 
tecting precedent to millions of lives of the innocent and unoffending 
long after you are gone. This triumph of yours will not be told in 
history by a great war debt, a mammoth pension roll, vacant chairs 
at unhappy firesides, and Decoration Day services to place flowers 
upon the mounds of those who achieved it, but it will be told in the 
victory of matchless diplomacy and of irresistible logic, presenting 
in an unequaled manner the everlasting principle of justice. 

Under your unrivaled and fearless leadership you have rescued 
the little children of America—the future fathers and mothers of 
our race—from the grinding slavery of the sweatshop and the fac¬ 
tory. No dividends or fortunes in the future will bear the stain of 
their toil and tears; their youthful days will be spent in the fresh 
air of growing life and in the schoolrooms of the land, where they 
will be properly prepared in strength and mind to become the future 
citizens of a great, humane, and free Republic.. 

You behold your country after three and a half years of your 
administration more prosperous than ever in its history. The earn¬ 
ings of the laborers of America exceed by three billion dollars their 
earnings under four years of the administration of your predecessor; 
the savings of the people deposited in the banks of our country 
amount to six billion dollars more than was deposited under the four 
years of the administration of Mr. Taft. 


f 


NOTIFICATION SPEECH OF HON. OLLIE M. JAMES. 5 

Our exports for the first time in our history lead the world; our 
farmers are more prosperous than ever; business is free; individual 
endeavor is no longer denied its reward. The increase in the busi¬ 
ness of the commercial world is so great that it almost staggers the 
mind to contemplate it, notwithstanding a world’s war has called 
for legislation to stay the process of the courts in debt collections in 
all the neutral countries of the world except here, where plenty 
blesses and prospers our people. Your beloved country marches for¬ 
ward to a prosperity never dreamed of. Your opponents are un¬ 
willingly forced to admit this happy condition of our people, which 
they say is not permanent, but they shall be no more regarded as 
prophets now than they were when thej^ said it could not come. 

Four years ago in accepting the nomination of the Democratic 
Party for the Presidency you stated that you would seek advice and 
counsel wherever you could obtain it upon free terms; this you have 
done. You uncovered and drove a mighty lobby out of the Capitol 
and invited Americans of all stations to come and counsel with you. 
The laborer with his grimy hand, the farmer with the tan of the 
blazing sun upon his face, the railroad men who hold the throttle, 
swing the lantern, and direct the rolling wheels of commerce, the 
toiler from the damp and darkness of mine, from the shop, the 
mill, and the factory; the business men from their offices, the clerk 
from the counter, the banker, the artisan, the lawyer, and the doctor, 
have come and found welcome and shared counsel with you. They 
knew you were free to serve, that you were unbossed, unowned, and 
unafraid. They knew you only sought th6 truth, and when you 
found it you were ready to challenge all of its adversaries to any 
conflict. 

When peace shall spread her white wings over d charred and 
bloody world, in the quiet of the chamber of the just historian, 
when the din and roar of political antagonism shall have ceased, 
when the prejudice and passion of partisanship shall have died away, 
when principle shall actuate men and parties rather than appetite, 
when ambition shall no longer lure men and parties to unjust attack, 
the historian will accord to you and your administration a foremost 
place in the Republic’s life. 

Americans are not ungrateful; the people are not unpatriotic; 
they recognize the thousands of difficulties that no man could foresee 
which you have encountered and mastered. Their verdict is already 
written; it has been agreed upon at the firesides of the land and 
has been molded in the schoolhouses, the places of worship, and 
wherever Americans meet to talk over the affairs and good of their 
country. That verdict leaps forth from almost every American 
heart in undying gratitude to you for the service you have rendered, 
for the peace, prosperity, and happiness your leadership has given, 




6 


NOTIFICATION SPEECH OF HON. OLEIE M. JAMES. 


and I but voice this day the overwhelming wish of Americans every¬ 
where for your triumphant reelection. 

This great convention which nominated you was neither con¬ 
trolled nor intimidated by any un-American or foreign influence. 
It had the heart beat and spoke the true sentiment of our country. 

A committee composed of the permanent chairman of the con¬ 
vention and one delegate from each State and Territory was ap¬ 
pointed to inform you of your selection as the nominee of the 
Democratic Party for President of the United States and to request 
you to accept it, and the convention did me the honor to make me 
chairman of this committee charged with such a happy mission. 

Therefore, in compliance with the command of that convention, 
this committee performs that pleasing duty, and, as the appointed 
agent of that great National Democratic Convention, I hand you 
this formal letter of notification, signed by the members of the 
committee, accompanied by a copy of the platform adopted by 
the convention, and upon that platform I have the honor to 
request your acceptance of the tendered nomination. And, on 
behalf of the Democrats of the whole Republic, who are proud of 
your great administration, we pledge you their enthusiastic and 
united support, and our prayer is that God, who blesses the peace¬ 
maker, may guide you to a glorious victory in November. 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE, 1916. 


Senator James, Gentlemen of the Notification Committee, Fel¬ 
low citizens : I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which 
the Jn ational Democratic Convention has again, in such generous 
fashion, asked me to accept without first expressing my profound 
gratitude to the party for the trust it reposes in me after four years 
of fiery trial in the midst of affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and 
the keen sense of added responsibility with which this honour fills 
(I had almost said burdens) me as I think of the great issues of 
national life and policy involved in the present and immediate 
future conduct of our government. I shall seek, as I have always 
sought, to justify the extraordinary confidence thus reposed in me by 
striving to purge my heart and purpose of every personal and of 
every misleading party motive and devoting every energy I have 
to the service of the nation as a whole, praying that I may continue 
to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men at every 
turn of the difficult business. 

For I do not doubt that the people of the United States will wish 
the Democratic Party to continue in control of the Government. 
They are not in the habit of rejecting those who have actually 
served them for those who are making doubtful and conjectural 
promises of service. Least of all are they likely to substitute those 
who promised to render them particular services and proved false 
to that promise for those who have actually rendered those very 
services. 

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases nobody but 
the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Demo¬ 
cratic Party has accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has 
merely fulfilled its explicit promises. But there can be no violation 
of good taste in calling attention to the manner in which those prom¬ 
ises have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting fact that 
many of the things accomplished were what the opposition party 
had again and again promised to do but had left undone. Indeed 
that is manifestly part of the business of this year of reckoning 
and assessment. There is no means of judging the future except by 
assessing the past. Constructive action must be weighed against 
destructive comment and reaction. The Democrats either have or 

* 7 



8 SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

have not understood the varied interests of the country. The test 
is contained in the record. 

What is that record ? What were the Democrats called into power 
to do? What things had long waited to be done, and how did the 
Democrats do them? It is a record of extraordinary length and 
variety, rich in elements of many kinds, but consistent in principle 
throughout and susceptible of brief recital. 

The Republican party was put out of power because of failure, 
practical failure and moral failure; because it had served special 
interests and not the country at large; because, under the leadership 
of its preferred and established guides, of those who still make its 
choices, it had lost touch with the thoughts and the needs of the 
nation and was living in a past age and under a fixed illusion, the 
illusion of greatness. It had framed tariff laws based upon a fear 
of foreign trade, a fundamental doubt as to American skill, enter¬ 
prise, and capacity, and a very tender regard for the profitable 
privileges of those who had gained control of domestic markets and 
domestic credits; and yet had enacted anti-trust laws which hampered 
the very things they meant to foster, which were stiff and inelastic, 
and in part unintelligible. It had permitted the country throughout 
the long period of its control to stagger from one financial crisis to 
another under the operation of a national banking law of its own 
framing which made stringency and panic certain and the control 
of the larger business operations of the country by the bankers of 
a few reserve centres inevitable; had made as if it meant to reform 
the law but had faint-heartedly failed in the attempt, because it 
could not bring itself to do the one thing necessary to make the 
reform genuine and effectual, namely, break up the control of small 
groups of bankers. It had been oblivious, or indifferent, to the fact 
that the farmers, upon whom the country depends for its food and 
in the last analysis for its prosperity, were without standing in the 
matter of commercial credit, without the protection of standards in 
their market transactions, and without systematic knowledge of the 
markets themselves; that the labourers of the country, the great army 
of men who man the industries it was professing to father and pro¬ 
mote, carried their labour as a mere commodity to market, were 
subject to restraint by novel and drastic process in the courts, were 
without assurance of compensation for industrial accidents, without 
federal assistance in accommodating labour disputes, and without 
national aid or advice in finding the places and the industries in 
which their labour was most needed. The country had no national 
system of road construction and development. Little intelligent 
attention was paid to the army, and not enough to the navy. The 
other republics of America distrusted us, because they found that 
we thought first of the profits of American investors and only as an 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 


9 


afterthought of impartial justice and helpful friendship. Its policy 
was provincial in all things; its purposes were out of harmony with 
the temper and purpose of the people and the timely development 
of the nation's interests. 

So things stood when the Democratic Party came into power. 
Hov t do they stand now T ? Alike in the- domestic field and in the 
w ide field of the commerce of the w T orld, American business and life 
and industry have been set free to move as they never moved before. 

The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of repelling for¬ 
eign trade, but upon the principle of encouraging it, upon something 
like a footing of. equality with our own in respect of the terms of 
competition, and a Tariff Board has been created whose function it 


will be to keep the relations of American with foreign business and 
industry under constant observation, for the guidance alike of our 
business men and of our Congress. American energies are now 
directed towards the markets of the world. 


The laws against trusts have been clarified bv definition, with a 
view T to making it plain that they were not directed against big 
business but only against unfair business and the pretense of com¬ 
petition w 7 here there w r as none; and a Trade Commission has been 
created with powers of guidance and accommodation which have 
relieved business men of unfounded fears and set them upon the 
road of hopeful and confident enterprise. 

By the Federal Reserve Act the supply of currency at the disposal 
of active business has been rendered elastic, taking its volume, not 
from a fixed body of investment securities, but from the liquid 
assets of daily trade; and these assets are assessed and accepted, not 
by distant groups of bankers in control of unavailable reserves, but 
by bankers at the many centres of local exchange who are in touch 
wdtli local conditions everywhere. 

Effective measures have been taken for the re-creation of an Ameri¬ 
can merchant marine and the revival of the American carrying trade 
indispensable to our emancipation from the control which foreigners 
have so long exercised over the opportunities, the routes, and the 
methods of our commerce with other countries. 

The Interstate Commerce Commission has been reorganized to 
enable it to perform its great and important functions more promptly 
and more efficiently. We have created, extended and improved the 
service of the parcels post. 

So much we have done for business. What other party has un¬ 
derstood the task so well or executed it so intelligently and ener¬ 
getically? What other party has attempted it at all? The Re¬ 
publican leaders, apparently, know of no means of assisting business 
but “ protection.” How to stimulate it and put it upon a new T foot¬ 
ing of energy and enterprise they have not suggested. • 


10 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 


For the farmers of the country we have virtually created com¬ 
mercial credit, means of the Federal Reserve Act and the Rural 
Credits Act. They now have the standing of other business men 
in the money market. We have successfully regulated speculation 
in “ futures ” and established standards in the marketing of grains. 
By an intelligent Warehouse Act we have assisted to make the 
standard crops available as never before both for systematic market¬ 
ing and as a security for loans from the banks. We have greatly 
added to the work of neighborhood demonstration on the farm itself 
of improved methods of cultivation, and, through the intelligent ex¬ 
tension of the functions of the Department of Agriculture, have made 
it possible for the farmer to learn systematically where his best 
markets are and how to get at them. 

The workingmen of America have been given a veritable emancipa¬ 
tion, by the legal recognition of a man’s labour as part of his life, and 
not a mere marketable commodity; by exempting labour organiza¬ 
tions from processes of the courts which treated their members like 
fractional parts of mobs and not like accessible and responsible in¬ 
dividuals; by releasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; 
by making adequate provision for compensation for industrial acci¬ 
dents; by providing suitable machinery for mediation and concili¬ 
ation in industrial disputes; and by putting the Federal Department 
of Labor at the disposal of the workingman when in search of work. 

We have effected the emancipation of the children of the country 
by releasing them from hurtful labour. We have instituted a sys¬ 
tem of national aid in the building of highroads such as the country 
has been feeling after for a centunL We have sought to equalize 
taxation by means of an equitable income tax. We have taken the 
steps that ought to have been taken at the outset to open up the re¬ 
sources of Alaska. We have provided for national defense upon 
a scale never before seriously proposed upon the responsibility of 
an entire political party. We have driven the tariff lobby from 
cover and obliged it to substitute solid argument for private in¬ 
fluence. 

This extraordinary recital must sound like a platform, a list of 
sanguine promises; but it is not. It is a record of promises made 
four years ago and now actually redeemed in constructive legislation. 

These things must profoundly disturb the thoughts and confound 
the plans of those who have made themselves believe that the Demo¬ 
cratic Party neither understood nor was ready to assist the business 
of the country in the great enterprises which it is its evident and 
inevitable destiny to undertake and carry through. The breaking 
up of the lobby must especially disconcert them: for it was through 
the lobby that they sought and were sure they had found the heart 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OP PRESIDENT WILSON. 11 

of things. The game of privilege can be played successfully by no 
other means. 

This record must equally astonish those who feared that the Demo¬ 
cratic Party had not opened its heart to comprehend the demands 
of social justice. We have in four years come very near to carrying 
out the platform of the Progressive Party as well as our own; for 
we also are progressives. 

There is one circumstance connected with this programme which 
ought to be very plainly stated. It was resisted at every step by the 
interests which the Republican Party had catered to and fostered 
at the expense of the country, and these same interests are now 
earnestly praying for a reaction which will save their privileges,— 
for the restoration of their sworn friends to power before it is too 
late to recover what 'they have lost. They fought with particular 
desperation and infinite resourcefulness the reform of the banking 
and currency system, knowing that to be the citadel of their control; 
and most anxiously are they hoping and planning for the amendment 
of the Federal Reserve Act by the concentration of control in a 
single bank which the old familiar group of bankers can keep under 
their eye and direction. But while the “ big men ” who used to write 
the tariffs and command the assistance of .the Treasury have been 
hostile,—all but a few with vision,—the average business man knows 
that he has been delivered, and that the fear that was once every 
day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit and directed 
enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crush him, 
is there no more, and will not return,—unless the party that consulted 
only the “ big men ” should return to power,—the party of masterly 
inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to resist 
change. 

The Republican Party is just the party that cannot meet the new 
conditions of a new age. It does not know the way and it does not 
wish new conditions. It tried to break away, from the old leaders 
and could not. They stilhselect its candidates and dictate its policy, 
still resist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know no 
methods of encouraging business but the old methods. When it 
changes its leaders and its purposes and brings its ideas up to date 
it will have the right to ask the American people to give it power 
again; but not until then. A new age, an age of revolutionary 
change, needs new purposes and new ideas. 

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles clearly con¬ 
ceived and consistently lived up to. Perhaps they have not been 
fully comprehended because they have hitherto governed interna¬ 
tional affairs only in theory, not in practice. They are simple, 
obvious, easily stated, and fundamental to American ideals. 


12 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 


We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and tra¬ 
ditional policy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of 
Europe and because we had had no part either of action or of policy 
in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because 
it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefi¬ 
nite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that 
terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength 
and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration 
and healing which must follow, when peace will have to build its 
house anew. 

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved: that was 
inevitable. Where they did this was our guiding principle: that 
property rights can be vindicated by claims for damages when the 
war is over, and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate such 
claims; but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be. The 
loss of life is irreparable. Neither can direct violations of a nation’s 
sovereignty await vindication in suits for damages. The nation that 
violates these essential rights must expect to be checked and called 
to account by direct challenge and resistance. It at once makes the 
quarrel in part our own. These are plain principles and we have 
never lost sight of them, or departed from them, whatever the stress 
or the perplexity of circumstance or the provocation to hasty resent¬ 
ment. The record is clear and consistent throughout and stands 
distinct and definite for anyone to judge who wishes to know the 
truth about it. 

The seas were not broad enough to keep the infection of the con¬ 
flict out of our own politics. The passions and intrigues of certain 
active groups and combinations of men amongst us who were born 
under foreign flags injected the poison of disloyalty into our own 
most critical affairs, laid violent hands upon many of our industries, 
and subjected us to the shame of divisions of sentiment and purpose 
in which America was contemned and forgotten. It is part of the 
business of this year of reckoning and settlement to speak plainly 
and act with unmistakable purpose in rebuke of these things, in 
order that they may be forever hereafter impossible. I am the candi¬ 
date of a party, but I am above all things else an American citizen. 
I neither seek the favour nor fear the displeasure of that small alien 
element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign power before 
loyalty to the United States. 

While Europe was at war our own continent, one of our own neigh¬ 
bours, was shaken by revolution. In that matter, too, principle was 
plain and it was imperative that we should live up to it if we were 
to deserve the trust of any real partisan of the right as free men 
see it. We have professed to believe, and we do believe, that the 
people of small and weak states have the right to expect to be dealt 


13 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

with exactly as the people of big and powerful states would be. We 
have acted upon that principle in dealing with the people of Mexico. 

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory was no viola¬ 
tion of that principle. We ventured to enter Mexican territory only 
because there were no military forces in Mexico that could protect 
our border from hostile attack and our own people from violence, 
and we have committed there no single act of hostility^ or interference 
even with the sovereign authority of the Republic of Mexico herself. 
It was a plain case of the violation of our own sovereignty which 
could not wait to be vindicated by damages and for which there was 
no other remedy. The authorities of Mexico were powerless to pre¬ 
vent it. 

Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable 
wrongs against the persons, of Americans have been committed within 
the territory of Mexico herself during this confused revolution, 
wrongs which could not be effectually checked so long as there was 
no constituted power in Mexico which was in a position to check 
them. We could not act directly in that matter ourselves without 
denying Mexicans the right to any revolution at -all which disturbed 
us and making the emancipation of her own people await our own 
interest and convenience. 

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking,—blindly, it 
may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with profound and passionate 
purpose and within their unquestionable right, apply what true 
American principle you will,—any principle that an American 
would publicly avow. The people of Mexico have not been suffered 
to own their own country or direct their own institutions. Outsiders, 
men out of other nations and with interests too often alien to their 
own, have dictated what their privileges and opportunities should 
be and wdio should control their land, their lives, and their resources,— 
some of them Americans, pressing for things they could never have 
got in their own country. The Mexican people are entitled to attempt 
their liberty from such influences; and so long as I have anything 
to do with the action of our great Government I shall do everything 
in my power to prevent anyone standing in their way. I know 
that this is hard for some persons to understand; but it is not hard 
for the plain people of the United States to understand. It is hard 
doctrine only for those who wish to get something for themselves out 
of Mexico. There are men, and noble women, too, not a few, of our 
own people, thank God! whose fortunes are invested in great prop¬ 
erties in Mexico who yet see the case with true vision and assess its 
issues with true American feeling. The rest can be left for the present 
out of the reckoning until this enslaved people has had its day of 
struggle towards the light. I have heard no one who was free from 
such influences propose interference by the United States with the 


14 SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 

internal affairs of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the Mexican 
people has proposed it. 

The people of the United States are capable of great sympathies 
and a noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. As their 
spokesman and representative, I have tried to act in the spirit they 
would wish me show. The people of Mexico are striving for the 
rights that are fundamental to life and happiness,—fifteen million 
oppressed men, overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual 
bondage in their own home of fertile lands and inexhaustible treasure! 
Some of the leaders of the revolution may often have been mistaken 
and violent and selfish, but the revolution itself was inevitable and 
is right. The unspeakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he 
served, traitorously overthrew the government of which he was a 
trusted part, impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven 
his people to the rebellion with which he had pretended to sympa¬ 
thize. The men who overcame him and drove him out represent at 
least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies at the very heart 
of liberty; and so long as they represent, however imperfectly, such 
a struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve their ends when I 
can. So long as the power of recognition rests with me the Govern¬ 
ment of the United States will refuse to extend the hand of welcome 
to any one who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery and 
violence. No permanency can be given the affairs of any republic 
by a title based upon intrigue and assassination. I declared that to 
be the policy of this Administration within three weeks after I 
assumed the presidency. I here again vow it. I am more inter¬ 
ested in the fortunes of oppressed men ond pitiful women and chil¬ 
dren than in any property rights whatever. Mistakes I have no 
doubt made in this perplexing business, but not in purpose or object. 

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and 
the relations of the United States with a distressed and distracted 
people. All America looks on. Test is now being made of us 
whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed 
to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among our weaker 
neighbours. We have undertaken these many years to play big 
brother to the republics of this hemisphere. This is the day of 
our test whether we mean, or have ever meant, to play that part 
for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the outcome 
of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in ours) depends 
every relationship of the United States with Latin America, whether 
in politics or in commerce and enterprise. These are great issues 
and lie at the heart of the gravest tasks of the future, tasks both 
economic and political and very intimately inwrought with many 
of the most vital of the new issues of the politics of the world. The 
republics of America have in the last three years been drawing 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 15 

together in a new spirit of accommodation, mutual understanding, 
and cordial cooperation. Much of the politics of the world in the 
years to come will depend upon their relationships with one another. 
It is a barren and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such 
things! 

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to 
face with many great and exacting problems which will search us 
through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part 
in the world that we mean to play. It will not bring us into their 
presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but sud¬ 
denly and at once, the moment the war in Europe is over. They will 
be new problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a new 
setting and with new elements which we have never dealt with or 
reckoned the force and meaning of before. They will require for 
their solution new thinking, fresh courage and resourcefulness, and 
in some matters radical reconsiderations of policy. We must be 
ready to mobilize our resources alike of brains and of materials. 

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future to stimu¬ 
late and excite us to the display of the best powers that are in us. 
We may enter it with confidence when we are sure that we under¬ 
stand it,—and we have provided ourselves already with the means 
of understanding it. 

Look first at what it will be necessary that the nations of the 
world should do to make the days to come tolerable and fit to live 
and work in; and then look at our part in what is to follow and our 
own duty of preparation. For we must be prepared both in re¬ 
sources and in policy. 

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in America 
must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm and of our authority 
as a nation to the organization of that peace upon world-wide 
foundations that cannot easily be shaken. No nation should be 
forced to take sides in any quarrel in which its own honour and in¬ 
tegrity and the fortunes of its own people are not involved; but no 
nation can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturb¬ 
ance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can no longer 
be confined to the areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart in 
interest when the life and interests of all nations are thrown into 
confusion and peril. If hopeful and generous enterprise is to be 
renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life are indeed to be 
revived when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and 
friendship must be generated by means the world has never tried 
before. The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that 
whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life must first be 
tested in the court of the Whole world’s opinion before it is attempted. 



16 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 


These are the new foundations the world must build for itself, 
and we must play our part in the reconstruction, generously and 
without too much thought of our separate interests. We must make 
ourselves ready to play it intelligently, vigourously and well. 

One of the contributions we must make to the world’s peace is 
this: We must see to it that the people in our insular possessions 
are treated in their own lands as we would treat them here, and 
make the rule of the United States mean the same thing everywhere,— 
the same justice, the same consideration for the essential rights of 
men. 

Besides contributing our ungrudging moral and practical support 
to the establishment of peace throughout the world we must actively 
and intelligently prepare ourselves to do our full service in the trade 
and industry which are to sustain and develop the life of the nations 
in the days to come. 

We have already been provident in this great matter and supplied 
ourselves with the instrumentalities of prompt adjustment. We 
have created, in the Federal Trade Commission, a means of inquiry 
and of accommodation in the field of commerce which ought both to 
coordinate the enterprises of our traders and manufacturers and to 
remove the barriers of misunderstanding and of a too technical 
interpretation of the law. In the new Tariff Commission we have 
added another instrumentality of observation and adjustment which 
promises to be immediately serviceable. The Trade Commission sub¬ 
stitutes counsel and accommodation for the harsher processes of 
legal restraint, and the Tariff Commission ought to substitute facts 
for prejudices and theories. Our exporters have for some time had 
the advantage of working in the new light thrown upon foreign 
markets and opportunities of trade by the intelligent inquiries and 
activities of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce which 
the Democratic Congress so wisely created in 1912. The Tariff Com¬ 
mission completes the machinery by which we shall be enabled to 
open up our legislative policy to the facts as they develop. 

We can no longer indulge our traditional provincialism. We are 
to play a leading part in the world drama whether we wish it or not. 
We shall lend, not borrow; act for ourselves, not imitate or follow ; 
organize and initiate, not peep about merely to see where we may 
get in. 

We have already formulated and agreed upon a policy of law which 
will explicitly remove the ban now supposed to rest upon coopera¬ 
tion amongst our exporters in seeking and securing their proper 
place in the markets of the world. The field will be free, the instru¬ 
mentalities at hand. It will only remain for the masters of enter¬ 
prise amongst us to act in energetic concert, and for the Government 
of the United States to insist upon the maintenance throughout the- 


SPEECH OE ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 17 

world of those conditions of fairness and of even-handed justice in 
the commercial dealings of the nations with one another upon which, 
after all, in the last analysis, the peace and ordered life of the world 
must ultimately depend. 

At home also we must see to it that the men who plan and de¬ 
velop and direct our business enterprises shall enjoy definite and 
settled conditions of law, a policy accommodated to the freest prog¬ 
ress. We have set the just and necessary limits. We have put all 
kinds of unfair competition under the ban and penalty of the law. 
We have barred monopoly. These fatal and ugly things being ex¬ 
cluded, we must now quicken action and facilitate enterprise by 
every just means within our choice. There will be peace in the 
business world, and, with peace, revived confidence and life. 

We ought both to husband and to develop our natural resources, 
our mines, our forests, our water power. I wish we could have made 
more progress than we have made in this vital matter; and I call once 
more, with the deepest earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates 
of a careful and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the 
advocates of a free and’ inviting field for private capital, on the 
other, to get together in a spirit of genuine accommodation and 
agreement and set this great policy forward at once. 

We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labour 
throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all 
occupations doing justice to the labourer, not only by paying a living 
wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labour 
what they ought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must 
safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation 
in which they are threatened or imperilled. That is more than 
justice, and better, because it is humanity and economy. 

We must coordinate the railway systems of the country for 
national use, and must facilitate and promote their development with 
^ a view T to that coordination and to their better adaptation as a whole 
* to the life and trade and defense of the nation. The life and in¬ 
dustry of the country can be free and unhampered only if these 
arteries are open, efficient, and complete. 

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circumstance and 
international policy effect their unfolding, whether the changes 
come slowly or come fast and without preface. 

I have not spoken explicit!} 7 , Gentlemen, of the platform adopted 
at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all that I have said. I have 
sought to interpret its spirit and meaning. The people of the United 
States do not need to be assured now that that platform is a definite 
pledge, a practical programme. We have proved to them that our 
promises are made to be kept. 

S. Doc. 543, 64-1-2 



18 


SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 


We hold very definite ideals. We believe that the energy and 
initiative of our people have been too narrowly coached and super¬ 
intended; that they should be set free, as we have set them free, to dis¬ 
perse themselves throughout the nation: that they should not be con¬ 
centrated in the hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as 
our opponents have again and again, in effect if not in purpose, 
sought to concentrate them. We believe, moreover,—who that looks 
about him now with comprehending eye can fail to believe?—that 
the day of Little Americanism, with its narrow horizons, when 
methods of u protection” and industrial nursing were the chief study 
of our provincial statesmen, are past and gone and that a day of 
enterprise has at last dawned for the United States whose field is 
the wide world. 

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all America, 
the republics of both continents, on to a new life and energy and 
initiative in the great affairs of peace. We are Americans for Big 
America, and rejoice to look forward to the days in which America 
shall strive to stir the world without irritating it or drawing it on 
to new antagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at 
last come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and jus¬ 
tice our passion for peace rests, and when all mankind shall look 
upon our great people with a new sentiment of admiration, friendly 
rivalry and real affection, as upon a people who, though keen to 
succeed, seeks always to be at once generous and just and to whom 
humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power. 

Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose we go to the 
country. 



4 


i 









